Sister Rosamma George Vadakethalakal

Sister Rosamma is one of 625 Medical Mission Sisters in 17 nations trying to be present to others in the spirit of Jesus the Healer.

The oldest of six children, Sister Rosamma is from a village in Kerala, India. She was drawn to the simplicity she saw in our Sisters who lived in the midst of the poor Muslim people in Erattupetta, Kerala. “There I saw religious life lived out in a different form,” she explains.

Sister went on to study nursing at Kurji Holy Family Hospital in Patna, and worked as a staff nurse in Mascat for four years, where she learned “the meaning and implications of living and working with an international group.”

After a time of formation in Erattupetta, Sister Rosamma made her First Vows in 1996. Her first mission assignment was to Gandhipet, Tamil Nadu, South India, where she was involved at the grassroots level for six years. “The people around us were dalits, low caste, who had undergone long years of oppression and isolation from higher castes,” she recalls. “The women were doubly oppressed and overburdened.”

Sister Rosamma went on to earn her Master’s Degree in Sociology from Anna Malai University. She was a member of our community in Maner, India, where she worked in the community health center. She then became involved in formation ministry, serving as pre-candidacy coordinator, and now as coordinator for the orientation phase of formation in South India.

Now living in Bharananganam, Sister is studying for a degree in psychology. She has served on a team giving psychotherapy sessions for the first year theologians of St. Paul’s Seminary, Trichy, and the novices of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Thomas, Trichy. She also has given health awareness classes for students of St. Xavier’s School, where she shared the message of the People’s Health Assembly, “People’s Health in People’s Hands.”

Sister reflects, “I am convinced that our choice to be on the side of the poor is the right one, and in this there is the hope of bringing social transformation. My hope for the future is to be an active presence of Christ, the healer, with whom I live and struggle to form a just society.”